Typically, there are three types of display methods associated with a liquid crystal display: a transmissive type display method, a reflective type display method and a transflective type display method.
In a transmissive type display method, a backlight module transmits light through the panel to display images. In other words, this type of liquid crystal display uses its own light source to provide light. With this configuration, however, when the ambient light is brighter than the light provided by the backlight module, the displayed images are not clear. In a reflective type display method, a reflective film is coated on the bottom glass substrate of the panel to reflect ambient light. The ambient light is used as a light source. In the case of this configuration, when the ambient light is dim, the displayed images are not clear.
A transflective type display method has been developed to resolve the above problems. The transflective type liquid crystal display has both transmissive type and reflective type characteristics. When the ambient light is strong, the transflective type liquid crystal display acts as a reflective type liquid crystal display and uses the ambient light to display images. When the ambient light is weak, on the other hand, the transflective type liquid crystal display acts as a transmissive type liquid crystal display and uses the backlight module to provide light to display images. Therefore, such a transflective type liquid crystal display may be used in conditions with different levels of ambient light. Today, the transflective type liquid crystal display is widely used in mobile phones and PDAs (personal digital assistants).